Book Review: 101 Quick And Easy Secrets For Using Your Digital Photographs by Matthew Bamberg

There are millions of photographs sitting around on laptops, desktops, in online accounts like Flickr and Facebook, and on storage devices such as hard drives and CDs. Most of them are just sitting around gathering digital dust. Add to that all of the years of film and slide images that are slowly deteriorating while collecting real dust.

The goal of 101 Quick And Easy Secrets For Using Your Digital Photographs is to show you different methods for resurrecting those images and putting them to use by showing you the best ways to manipulate, manage, publish, share, and promote your images. This book is 208 pages and is divided into 13 chapters.

Chapter 1, "Preparing Your Photos for Use," you need to make sure you have everything handled properly. That means making sure that your computer is running right so you don't lose your images. You also need to have an alternate plan such as offline storage so that if something bad happens you can recover. You will also need products to work with your images. In this chapter you will learn about all of these.

Chapter 2, "Sharing Your Photos Online," is about getting your images off of your computer and to online places where you can share them with others. A number of sites are described including Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Photobucket, ImageShack, MySpace, and Facebook.

Chapter 3, "Sharing Your Photos with Family and Friends," shows various ways to share your images with friends and family including how to have photo night parties, working with photography groups, taking classes, and making a website for displaying your images.

Chapter 4, "Preparing Your Photos for Use," usually starts by printing the best of them. This will give you a better feel for how they really look. This chapter shows you how to set you images up for printing. It includes choosing the right printer, learning about color management, and how to outsource the printing of your images.

Chapter 5, "Scrapbooking Bug Gotcha," now takes a look at putting two hobbies together as one; that of photography and scrapbooking. In this chapter you will see how to do traditional paper scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking, as well as what kinds of supplies you need and where to get them.

Chapter 6, "Photo Blog Heaven," now puts together photography and blogging. This can be as simple as a personal site, or as complex as a site that not only shows off pictures, but helps others with their needs. Here you will explore the different options that are available to you.

Chapter 7, "As Pretty as a Picture Frame," reminds us that the presentation of an image is just as important as the image itself. Depending on how you are displaying them, things like digital picture frames, standard matting and framing, and even digitized framing are all options.

Chapter 8, "Making Big Bucks Selling Your Photos (and Donating Them, Too)," is another option if you are able to take interesting and sharp pictures of everyday situations. While you may not be up to the standards of National Geographic, but there are a lot of microstock companies who buy images.

Chapter 9, "Personal Accessories," are another way to use your images. This includes the printing of tee-shirts, coffee mugs, greeting cards, and business cards. In this chapter you will see differing types of things that you can get your images printed on.

Chapter 10, "Getting Published," is another route to find a use for your photos. There are a lot of places that buy images or publish them giving you more recognition. They can be for use on the web, in magazines, in books, and even in contests.

Chapter 11, "Promoting Yourself," can begin with something as simple as a website. To do this you will need to examine your goals and find out what you want on your site. Then you need to let others know about it by the use of social sites like Twitter and other online sources.

Chapter 12, "Working with Slideshows," is another way to get noticed. If you can make good presentations, you can post them to your site, YouTube and other places. Here you will learn about some of the options for creating and showing slideshows.

Chapter 13, "Film to Digital," looks back at old school and how you can convert your old film images to digital. This includes scanning them yourself as well as sending them out to have them professionally done.

101 Quick And Easy Secrets For Using Your Digital Photographs is a very good book for the consumer level photographer who loves to take pictures, but just doesn't know what to do with them afterwards. Presented here is a lot of inspiration that will give you more enjoyment in your hobby and help you to put your photos to work.

There are a lot of ideas that are presented in 101 Quick And Easy Secrets For Using Your Digital Photographs and you are stepped through the entire process from getting them from your camera to displaying them in various venues. While the book does not talk down to you, it can be easily understood by just about anyone including the complete novice.

If you are have digital photos and are looking for new things to do with them no matter how inexperienced you are, I think you will find 101 Quick And Easy Secrets For Using Your Digital Photographs to be a great introduction to using your digital photographs.